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NRA Complaint Takes Down 38,000 Websites (vice.com)
Sarah Jeong, reporting for Motherboard:38,000 websites hosted by the automated publishing service Surge went down today, after the National Rifle Association sent a legal notice over a parody website created by the Yes Men. A few days ago, the Yes Men released the parody video, "Share the Safety" -- announcing a supposed NRA program to deliver firearms into the hands of those too impoverished to afford guns. The opening frame of the video says "Paid for in part by the National Rifle Association of America with additional support from Smith & Wesson Holding Corporation." "Systemic poverty and dumb laws keep the urban poor unable to acquire life-saving firearms," says the video, which is available on YouTube. "That's why we at the NRA are teaming up with Smith & Wesson to share the safety.â The YouTube description includes a link to the "official" website, ShareTheSafety.org.
Where do I sign up?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Dunno. The way the summary is written, it sounds a lot like impersonation.
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Whoever killed 38,000 websites to get rid of the one the DMCA targeted is an idiot.
I am all for parody, but isn't claiming to be supported by the organization you are parodying a bit much?
By blatantly stating that the NRA is sponsoring it and supports it, is not fine
There are rules. They exist for a reason.
Try doing a parody site on abortion and state plainly that the Democratic National Committee is paying for it and that Planned Parenthood is also sponsoring it.
I expect you will see the same thing.
But I don't expect that you will understand because you don't like the NRA
Aside from any hate for the NRA, I see no issue with this. Some people pulled a stunt giving off the false impression that they represented the NRA and Smith & Wesson.* The NRA requested a takedown, Surge complied with the takedown but screwed the pooch and brought down 38,000 sites instead of just the target.
The wording of the the article implies the NRA should be held responsible. It is the fault of Surge.
*Yeah I know it was supposed to be a "parody", but watch the video on YouTube. They never mention that they are not affiliated with the NRA or S&W. In fact, the little disclaimer on the bottom at the end of the video even makes the claim that they do represent the NRA.
Perhaps the authors over-did it intentionally to trigger the Streisand Effect.
Table-ized A.I.
The reality behind this socialist produced "mocumentary" tells a much different story! In Detroit the Police Chief with massive government cutbacks advised local citizens to arm themselves! http://hotair.com/archives/201... It really bothers these Yes Men that the result of citizens arming themselves has been steep declines in Detroit crime! From the article: >>Detroit has experienced 37 percent fewer robberies in 2014 than during the same period last year, 22 percent fewer break-ins of businesses and homes, and 30 percent fewer carjackings. Craig attributed the drop to better police work and criminals being reluctant to prey on citizens who may be carrying guns. “Criminals are getting the message that good Detroiters are armed and will use that weapon,” said Craig, who has repeatedly said he believes armed citizens deter crime. “I don’t want to take away from the good work our investigators are doing, but I think part of the drop in crime, and robberies in particular, is because criminals are thinking twice that citizens could be armed. “I can’t say what specific percentage is caused by this, but there’s no question in my mind it has had an effect,” Craig said. Compare Detroit's scenario to Chicago's: Chicago has the strictest gun laws in the U.S. and the highest gun homicide rate! Murder citie's crime rates are off the charts, because citizens can't defend themselves, while the criminals have all the guns. These "Yes Men" are so far from reality, it makes their little joke video much funnier, as they have no idea what they are lampooning!
Among the other outright stupidities that humans in general, especially here in the U.S., where I was born, raised, and have spent my entire life: Thinking that putting more barriers up to discourage and outright prevent the acquisition of firearms by law-abiding citizens is going to in any way shape or form reduce the occurance of mass-shootings like we've been seeing; it won't. What it'll do is roughly equivalent to a car alarm, or a deadbolt lock on the front door of your house: It'll deter the most casual criminals, but the professionals and those truly dedicated to their course of action will find a way to get the tools they want to perform whatever mayhem they have in mind. If it's not guns, they'll obtain or make IEDs of some kind and blow people up (Boston Marathon bombers) or just get knives or even swords or other hand-to-hand weapons to attack people with, or for all we know something more exotic.
Now, to all you SJWs and hysterical types who are now so triggered that you need to go take a Xanax so you can be calm enough to write your insults and death-threats against me: Don't even bother. I don't give a fuck what you think, because I think you and your gun-control rhetoric are utterly and completely wrong, and a snowball's chance in hell is still greater than you've got to try to even begin to change my mind. Oh, and by the way: I don't even own a single gun myself; but I support the Constitutional right every U.S. citizen has with regard to firearms, and if you don't then I think you're a bad citizen and should consider renouncing your citizenship and finding somewhere else to live.
Oh, and also: I'm not voting for either Trump or Clinton, because I don't trust either one of them or think either one of them is in any way shape or form suited to being POTUS, so don't bother hanging that 'Republican' bullshit on me, either; save your bandwidth for someone who gives a fuck what you think.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Now, people are starting to question the position of the NRA that *anybody* regardless of who they are should be able to procure guns
Not their actual position, although waving blanket, false statements like that around is what passes for political discourse these days. Actual fact: the current background check system was actually strongly supported by the gun lobby: people who are convicted felons or legally declared mentally incompetent don't have second amendment rights. Or many other constitutional rights, say for example, voting. The current argument (causing the House to behave like the dysfunctional third world legislative clique it apparently actually is) is over the "sounds good!" legislation of "people on the terror watch list shouldn't be allowed to buy firearms". Hmm. So, a law in which denies something listed on the bill of rights to people on a secret government list, who can get on that list simply by someone voicing suspicion, with no procedure for getting off the list (or even knowing if/why they're on it)? Pick anything else that's a legal right (voting? free speech? Self-incrimination? Illegal search and seizure?) and swap that in for "gun ownership" in this scenario and watch everyone across the political spectrum freak out. We tried something like this in the 50's with McCarthy when the enemies were Commies instead of Radicals, and are universally ashamed of that fact in hindsight. Of course the NRA should be objecting to this. I'm shocked that the ACLU, for example, isn't too.
I agree with the other posters that these videos are likely to cause confusion to the average viewer, and are probably in violation of trademark law. That said, the way to handle that is in the courts.
DCMA takedown requests only apply to copyright infringement, not trademark law. It is a violation of the law to use the DCMA this way, both according to the USPTOs guidelines(See B.4), and existing case law.
From the article, it is unknown whether their lawyers sent a DCMA request or a some other sort of cease and desist letter. But either way, Digitalocean had no legal obligation to take down the content, or any legal liability if they didn't take it down. The fact that they shutdown an entire service over a toothless complaint about one page on that service is unacceptable, and people should seriously reconsider doing business with them in the future.
That used to be the case, as others here have explained. After sandy hook, Obama made an executive order to give them 10 million for research, it was big at the time because they assumed it would confirm their beliefs.
Then it was never heard from again due to the results of the study.
Here's a short summary of their findings, link to the actual paper is in there as well.
http://www.gunsandammo.com/pol...
Is the Chicago Federal DA even bothering to prosecute what would likely be many, many Federal firearms violations (felon with a gun, etc)?
Or is the Obama-Emmanuel-DOJ nexus so strong that they're not bothering with Federal firearms prosecutions because it would look bad for a hard-Democratic city that was the home of the first Black President to have a high rate of prosecution of Black felons? It disrupts the narrative.
The argument is “Do you believe people with AR-15s” can defend against the US military? The answer is yes, no, and it depends. Let’s look at some numbers and assumptions (not perfect I know )
There are about 3M active personal across all branches of the military.
Not all 3M are combat roles. Tooth to tail ratios will come into play.
There are probably around 160M people fighting age (Ages 18 – 65).
There about 12M veterans
The continental US is much larger than Iraq and Afghanistan. This makes logistical support much harder
Defending is a lot harder than attacking.
The unknown of outside powers
Based on the above I believe that the citizens would win. 3M is not a lot of troops to hold a country as large as the US. And holding cities and key infrastructure takes a massive amount of troops, will, and logistical support. Iraq and Afghanistan have clearly shown that a technological inferior enemy can still “win” (think of overall money/lives lost/state of the countries now/etc) and the populations and size of the countries are much smaller.
Then you have tooth to tail rations to think about. If you don’t know what this is it means for a Combat Role (X) there needs to be (Y) amount of support staff for that combat role to be used/be effective. The current ratio for infantry is 1:7. Meaning you need 7 support people for that 1 infantry person to be effective. For fighter plans the ratios are much higher (I have seen figures 1:50. Maintenance, arms, flight planning, etc,).
So let’s say a f-15 pilot (or drone pilot) is ordered to bomb fellow citizens. If the pilot says yes and the support says yes the mission can happen. If the pilot says no and the support says yes the mission can’t happen (who is going to fly the plane the guy who refuels the aircraft?). If the pilot yes and the support says no the mission can’t happen (i.e. that one pilot is not getting the plane all ready to go). If the pilot says yes and not all 50 say yes then the mission can happen but at reduced efficiency.
Also if the military is used on the civilians the question becomes what percentage of the military will obey the order? 100% would not support the order, nor would 100% jump to the other side. So somewhere in between which means the military would be operating at a reduced efficiency. Plus defending something is a lot harder than attacking it. The defenders have to be alert 100% of the time while those attacking only have to be alert when they attack. If the US military is trying to defend a lot of critical infrastructure at once (electric, water, cities, food, ammunition, fuel, etc). The amount of combat troops they will have to launch attacks will be greatly reduced.
Sure you could maybe do conscription but history/data has shown that conscripted troops are less effective and could cause larger parts of the population to turn against you.
Also high tech weaponry (like drones, tanks, HIMARs, etc.) require huge logistical support. Disrupting that support (given size of country, number of civilians, etc) would probably not be as difficult as people think it is. Then you have to think about ROE. A lot would also depend of the ROE used and how evil the government is. Don’t care about your cities/population then artillery/bombing runs/etc. can start to mess up cities at the cost of the people hating you more. Decide the ROE is to spare cities and people then your artillery/bombers/etc are pretty useless.
I think the key comes down to which sides the citizens decide to support. The veterans will be able to provide military experience and tactics for those who oppose the military. The military itself will fracture. And who knows what the outside powers will do? Of course they will get involved but in what fashion (selling arms, sending over troops, taking land, etc).
That paper isn't a research paper but a document describing the questions that need answered in future research studies.
It's a blueprint for how to proceed, not a research paper in it's own right.
The research agenda proposed in this report is intended as an initial—not a conclusive or all-encompassing—set of questions critical to developing the most effective policies to reduce the occurrence and impact of firearm-related violence in the United States. No single agency or research strategy can provide all the answers. This report focuses on the public health aspects of firearm violence; the committee expects that this research agenda will be integrated with research conducted from criminal justice and other perspectives to provide a much fuller knowledge base to underpin our nation’s approach to dealing with this very important set of societal issues.
So Guns and Ammo Magazine read an outline for a proposed line of questioning, and drew conclusions the outline itself doesn't even draw...because it doesn't even try.
Rather what it does is to point to other research efforts and their contradictory findings as a starting point for developing the questions that should be asked. And of the "research" quotes that G&A provides are cherry picked quotes from other studies referenced by the authors of the blueprint to illustrate previous, current, and ongoing research to illustrate which questions need asked.
Again: this is not a research paper.
This group performed no research (yet, or as of the publishing of this paper).
Ergo, this is not the result of the CDC research.
It's simply the first step, figuring out what questions to ask, in doing that research.
Nice try genius.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
That's not a citation that's "the executive director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action" making the same claim without providing a citation.
One of the lead researchers employed in the CDC’s effort was quoted, stating “We’re going to systematically build the case that owning firearms causes deaths.” Another researcher said he envisioned a long-term campaign “to convince Americans that guns are, first and foremost, a public health menace.”
Is unsourced and unnamed making it rather difficult to confirm.
Some digging (which shouldn't be necessary since providing a citation is trivial) turns up http://dailycaller.com/2013/10... which in turn makes the claim:
Patrick O’Carroll, a CDC official involved in the “research,” wrote in the February 3, 1989, Journal of the American Medical Association: “We’re going to systematically build the case that owning firearms causes deaths.”
However the Feb 3 1989 issue of JAMA does not have an article in it authored by Patrick O'Carroll.
Yet more digging (which again should be unnecessary) shows that issue does have an article: Marsha F. Goldsmith, "Epidemiologists Aim at New Target: Health Risk of Handgun Proliferation," Journal of the American Medical Association vol. 261 no. 5, February 3, 1989, pp. 675-76 (http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=376136) - note citations are really easy to do. That article apparently quotes O'Carroll, however that itself it uncited so we have hearsay.
And then we do actually have something in writing from O'Carroll in JAMA, in July 1989. A letter to the editor claiming that he was misrepresented in the article above and didn't say any such thing: Patrick O'Carroll, "CDC's Approach to Firearm Injuries," Journal of the American Medical Association vol. 262 no. 3, July 21, 1989, pp.348-349.
So do you have an actual citation? Note they are easy to give, see the two I gave above.